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324 MOTION PICTURES I922-I945
or "czar/' as he was usually called. And recently in Hollywood there had occurred a series of unsavory incidents which had given the responsible-minded producers as much concern in their capacity as good citizens as in their professional status as picture-makers. I am sure these considerations influenced the producers and distributors in their decision to follow the lead of baseball.
The question still remained in my mind: why me?
Rogers and Selznick spoke sincerely and in a highly complimentary way, but I did not feel that their reasons for selecting me were justified. Since then I have read a number of rationalizations, in articles and books, setting forth what my qualifications might have been. These still strike me as more flattering than convincing. However, there it was. I promised to think it over during the Christmas holidays.
As it turned out, "thinking it over" proved to be a big job, at any rate subjectively. In this case I was not only trying to decide something but to weigh and analyze my own inner motive. I knew that if I accepted the offer I would be criticized for yielding to a mercenary object and renouncing, as it were, dignity for gain— as if being Postmaster General were something priestly, consecrated by vows which a man might not forsake with self-respect. I realized that such a view was simply dramatizing the matter; neither did it take into account my previously formed determination to return to private life as soon as I could, as I had told President Harding before his inauguration. It was understood that I would remain as Postmaster General only until the department was satisfactorily reorganized, and I felt that this had been accomplished.
I chuckle now at my fancy that the motion picture post would signify any kind of "private life."
There was another side to the problem I had to consider. I had been raised in a Christian home, and while I am not a reformer I hope that I have always been public-spirited. It required no great insight to see that the voung movie giant might well grow up a Frankenstein. And precisely because I was not a reformer, I dreaded the blunders the reformers would make in dealing with this new and vital force. I was thinking of the parallel case of prohibition— which had by no means produced the era of national sobriety its proponents had contemplated.
For the moment I did not confide my problem to anyone. In a few days I would join my home folks in Sullivan. I had recovered sufficiently to attend to some routine matters preparatory to leaving when, to my dismay, the story of the offer broke in the press. Certainly I had given no indication of the business, even to intimate friends. I had wanted to think it out bv mvself. I knew, too, without having to be reassured, that neither Mr. Selznick, Mr. Rooers, nor anv of their associates would wish to break the story prematurely. But it had leaked out, and it